Sister Julie Vieira - Nun Shoes

 

When I was in high school, I abhorred the idea of belonging to any kind of exclusive group. I didn't want to be known as just the basketball player, or just the yearbook editor, or just the stagehand. I wanted to belong to something that was bigger than myself, that was more than any one thing. 

 

As I made my awkward way through high school, one of my favorite classes was our senior class on Faith. We were doing a section on social justice. And in one class, our teacher presented the documentary Roses in December. Roses in December is the story about the four church women who were killed in El Salvador. And there I was in high school, most significant questions of my life had to do with what to have at lunch and what to wear in the morning. And here I was watching this film about these women who had given their life to be with the people of El Salvador. They had given their life, and they had also given their death, and I thought to myself, “What is so significant in my own life that I would be willing to give my life for it and my death?” 

 

These questions and these women stayed with me as I made my way through college and then into grad school. I was studying theology, and I discovered that those questions kept coming back and that no textbook seemed to have the answer for me as to what to do. So, I found myself a spiritual director, a professor of theology at my school, and she also happened to be a Catholic Sister. So, we would meet every couple weeks and I would tell her all of my spiritual anguish and talk about the questions that I had. She was like, "Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm." 

 

And if you've ever been to spiritual directions, it's great because spiritual directors try to set up this nice prayerful ambiance. There's like a candle going, there's some flowers. There's like a little open Bible at a very apropos Bible verse. And so, there's all these wonderful holy accoutrements. While I was sitting there with her, I seemed to always focus on her shoes. [audience chuckles] I'm like, “She's wearing high heeled shoes. These are not the sensible nun shoes that I had thought nuns wore.” And so, I realized, I don't think I've ever paid attention to the shoes that sisters are wearing. I don't think I've ever known a sister this up close and personal. And so, then I'm like, “Hmm, I wonder what else there is to know.” I thought about it, I'm like, “Wow, she's got a doctorate in theology. She's very well accepted in theology community. World class theologian, very funny, always delightful.” I'm like, “Hmm, this is interesting.” 

 

So, during spiritual direction, I thought I would do the redirect strategies. So, instead of talking about my own life, I'd say, "So, Sister Margaret, how are things going? How are your sisters?" And so, I would do the redirect to try to get to know her a little bit better and to find out what this was all about. What I found was that I was becoming more interested in hearing her tell her story than me telling my story of spiritual anguish. [audience chuckles] And I thought, there's something very compelling about this to me.

 

So, I decided instead of telling her anything like, “Oh my gosh, I think it's amazing you're a Catholic sister,” I decided that I would engage in the time-honored tradition of nun surveillance. [audience laughter] Nun surveillance is the best. So, basically, what you do is you kind of scope out the nuns that are around you and you look at them, you say, “What are they wearing? What kind of shoes do they have? What do they do, what kind of ministries?” It's just a way to say they are more than a Catholic sister. There's this whole life that they have. 

 

So, I engaged in nun surveillance. And my greatest achievement was I had heard that one of my special spiritual directors’ sisters was coming to speak at our theology school. She was going to give a lecture on God knows what. I don't even know what it was. I just wanted to go and hear what it was like for a nun to give a world class presentation and see how she talked, what her theology was like, what kind of shoes she had on. [audience laughter] And I thought, I'm going to just go sit in the back of the lecture hall and I shall observe.

 

So, there I was, keeping an eye, listening to the lecture a little bit, don't know what she was talking about, wasn't paying attention. And there I am sitting there and I'm like, “Oh, this is very interesting. She holds herself all right.” I'm a first-year theology student. I'm like, “Her theology isn't that bad. [audience chuckles] That's all right. She does all right.” So, I'd done all my nun scoping for the evening was ready to head out of the lecture hall and I was just going to slip out. As I started to get up from my seat, there in front of me was my spiritual director, and I'm like, “Oh my God.” I felt like I just gotten caught in some big illicit act. [audience chuckles] 

 

Margaret comes over to me and she says, "Oh, Julie, it's so good to see you. I would love for you to meet the sisters. A few of our sisters came in, they heard that you are young, was giving a talk, and they wanted to come and support her." I'm like, “She's a world class theologian. She doesn't need any support. And here are these women coming to just like be her fan club?” I'm like, “That's interesting.” So, Margaret grabs my hand and walks me over to the sisters. They welcomed me. And there we were, and I thought, okay, introductions, that's it. And then, they just started chit chatting with me, with each other. They congratulated Mary Ellen. They caught up with each other, because they hadn't seen each other in a while. 

 

All the while, Margaret is holding onto my hand. And I thought to myself, “Oh my God, this is sisterhood.” It was this dying of a realization that these individual women that I was getting to know and scoping out through nun surveillance weren't just individuals, that they were alive and animated through this thing that all I could say was sisterhood. So, after that, I went home and laid down. [audience chuckles] That experience stayed with me. I couldn't believe that I would ever experience that again. I thought that my spiritual director was pretty unique and I thought, “Well, that experience at the lecture hall, that was probably just totally unique and random.” The experience, though, kept staying with me. 

 

So, like St. Anthony in the desert, I decided to face my demons. I called The Mother House and asked to speak to the vocation director. After talking a little bit, we decided that, I could come for a Come and See, which is a retreat for people who are thinking about entering community, get to know the community. So, I finally told Margaret that I was doing this and she's like, "Mm-hmm." I went on the Come and See. I like steeled myself, I'm like, “This is going to be fine. I mean, they're going to pray. I'm going to meet sisters, I'm going to learn about the congregation.” I was totally ready to confirm that my aspiration was not to become a Catholic sister.

 

And so, we did all those things. And I'm like, “This is going great. This is not for me.” And that night, we went out for dinner. We went to one of the local restaurants. It was Saturday night. Of course, what do you do on Saturday? You go out with the nuns. [audience chuckles] And so, there we were at this restaurant. It's totally crowded. There are lines up. So, one of the other young woman that was with me, who was also discerning, we decided we're going to go up to the bar and have ourselves a pint of beer. That'll calm our nerves. And so, one of the sisters joined us and so, the three of us were chit chatting at the bar. 

 

Our table was called, and we started to head over. Another sister comes up to me, she says, "Oh, Julie, I'm so glad you got to meet that sister. You know, she does a great ministry in alcohol addictions counseling. [audience laughter] And she also happens to be the one responsible for accepting new members to the congregation." [audience laughter] I thought to myself, “Oh my God, what have I done?” And there I was. I suddenly realized I actually care what these sisters think about me. I care about the fact that I want to be the kind of person that would be a member of their community, that would be part of that sisterhood. 

 

So, we finally make it to the dinner table. Thank God. There we are sitting there and having dinner. One of the other sisters leans over to me in the middle of the meal and says, "Watch this." She excuses herself from the table, walks around the restaurant, and there was a live band playing. I see her go up and talk to the band leader. She comes back to the table. After a few minutes, there's this big restaurant wide announcement. And it says, "Everybody, we have a very special day today. Someone in the audience here, or someone in the restaurant here is celebrating their 21st birthday. Frances Ryan, please stand up. We celebrate your 21st birthday." 

 

Everyone around our table looks at one another. Our vocation director, 60-year-old nun was named Frances Ryan. [audience laughter] When it dawns on her, what had just happened. She bursts out laughing. The rest of us were laughing. She stands up. The restaurant takes a moment to take this all in, that this 21-year-old that they were celebrating was actually a 60-year-old nun. And there we were, we're like, “Oh my God, this is sisterhood.” That feeling of sisterhood came right back and it was like, “This is how we are with one another. And you are a part of this. This is how we are with one another.” 

 

It took me a little while to recover from the whole Come and See experience. [audience chuckles] I found myself about a year later, sitting at community night with some sisters. The telephone rang, they picked it up, and it was our president from our congregation. They handed the phone to me, and she was calling to tell me that I had been accepted as a member of the congregation. I put the phone down, and I looked up to see my three sisters there, and I realized I was already in the circle of sisterhood.